


Snapshots of a Family

by ZenyZootSuit



Series: A Family, or Something Like It [2]
Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Discussion of Abortion, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hunter's Curse (Vampire Diaries), Hurt/Comfort, Major trauma, Miscarriage, More tags to be added, Mpreg, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Pregnancy, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, This is basically me rewriting half the originals series in this verse, This is really sad, discussion of infanticide, just a traumatized one, klaus is an asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-02-16 10:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18689977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenyZootSuit/pseuds/ZenyZootSuit
Summary: Klaus's firstborn daughter died in front of him a thousand years ago. He never got over it. How does one get over it? And more importantly, how does one risk it happening again?Somewhat of a rewrite of The Originals in this verse





	1. Impossible

**Author's Note:**

> Any dialogue that can be attributed to the episode is not written by me and I do not claim it to be so. This is what I like to do, I take my own idea and weave it into canon as precisely as possible.
> 
> This is part 2 of a series. I recommend reading part 1 first, this will make no sense if you don't. Mind the tags as well. It was sad before and it still is.
> 
> Takes place during 1x01

*******

“That’s impossible.”

But then again, nothing was when it came to his brother.

So it turned out, Elijah realized as soon as they brought the woman out, that it was indeed possible. That much he could tell from the barely audible heartbeat thumping away next to the sound of the woman’s own.

And if one thing was for certain, this was going to be _messy_.

Damage control then, starting with this woman. Elijah asked for and was granted a word in private with her. He then proceeded to tell her everything he felt she needed to know. Which was, well, everything.

“I’m Hayley,” she said, directly after ensuring Elijah was aware of her (rightfully) abysmal opinion of his their father, and shook his hand. “You should probably know my name if you’re going to tell me your whole life story.”

Elijah paused for a long moment, because he hadn’t told her everything, had he? And he had to tell her, didn’t he? God, of course he did. It wasn’t a question of if or even when. He could hardly justify throwing this poor girl out of the frying pan and into the fire to save himself a bit of discomfort.

He told her about their father’s hunt for Niklaus, for all of them. He told her about their father’s death at his brother’s hands, how instead of it bringing peace to his troubled sibling, it had only made everything worse. 

“I wonder if perhaps this baby might be a way for my brother to find happiness,” he mused out loud. Hayley watched him from where she sat. “This child might fix everything. Or....I must be honest with you, my dear...it might truly drive him off the deep end.”

She frowned at him, suddenly very apprehensive and again, rightfully so, but said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

“You see…” Elijah broke off, struggling to find the words. It may have actually happened to his brother, but this was a topic that pained all of the Mikaelson children. Intimately so. “My brother…had a baby himself once.”

“...You mean like… _himself_ , himself?”

“Yes. I am told it is an attribute of some men of the werewolf line. Were you aware of it?”

Hayley nodded. “I know it used to be…not _un_ common. Anymore though most kids end up getting like surgery so their hormones don’t get screwed up or whatever, but I knew of a couple guys who had kids that way, yeah. And Klaus did?”

Elijah nodded. “He had a daughter. It was before we became vampires. He was...quite young.” He smiled a little. “I suppose you’ve caught me in a lie. Because of his pregnancy we knew long before he killed someone that he was a wolf. We tell the story as we do to preserve his privacy per his...ah...request.”

“What happened to her? His baby?”

He tried to find the words to explain it to her. All he could do was stand there, mouth gaping like a fish, until a single tear rolled down his cheek. He couldn’t tell her, so he showed her.

_*******_

_He knew as soon as he walked out that he had made a terrible mistake, as he always did whenever he walked out on his brother._

_Coward!_

_Even Rebekah followed him soon enough, trembling. Elijah hugged her._

_“Come, let’s go find Kol.”_

_Rebekah stood firm. “I might not be able to be in there with Nik, but I’m not going any further than this until I know he’s okay!”_

_So Elijah stayed with her, proud of her strength and wishing he had more of it._

_Perhaps the fact that there were no raised voices should have tipped him off that something was truly wrong._

_A piercing, agonized scream that came from the inside the house was enough to send both of them running._

_Elijah was almost sick when he saw what was inside. Mikael, standing over their brother, looking (if Elijah didn’t know better) almost a little shaken. Klaus, crouched on the floor, kneeling over his baby…who was…was…._

_Rebekah stared to cry. Elijah did, too._

_He would never forgive himself for walking out. Neither would Rebekah._

*******

Hayley wrenched away from him, a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with shock.

“Oh my God…”

Elijah nodded and wiped the tear off his cheek.

“No wonder he’s…the way he is.” She ran a hand through her hair. “The fact that he even survived that…”

That, Elijah would agree, was truly a miracle. One he suspected was only accomplished out of sheer spite on his brother’s part. And a great deal of begging on his and Rebekah’s.

“I told you this, Hayley, so that you might better understand some of my brother’s actions. It does not excuse them, but it does explain them. I would, however, caution you to never mention to my brother that you know this. He has all but forbidden my siblings and I to speak of it.”

Yes, he could recall a time, a few months after the incident, that he had attempted to inquire as to how his brother was feeling. Niklaus had nearly broken his jaw before warning him never to speak of it again. He then proceeded to actually break both Kol and Finn’s noses and had shouted at Rebekah until she cried when they later inquired the same.

“Why?”

“Now that is a long story.”

“Longer than the one you’ve already told me?”

Fair enough. Elijah cracked a smile and elaborated.

“Our father could hardly have word getting around that he murdered a newborn child. That would have surely meant his death at the hands of our neighbors. So instead, he spread it around the village that Nikalus’s baby had been stillborn, and that my brother had gone mad with grief. That he was making up stories about how his daughter had been murdered to cope with the loss, _the poor boy_.” Elijah spat out the last words. “That very nearly did drive my brother mad. I cannot begin to imagine how painful it must have been to hear that after everything that happened.”

“And none of you said anything?”

Elijah shook his head. “One of my…numerous regrets.”

(He recalled how his brother had quaked where he stood when the first villager had expressed their sympathies for his stillborn daughter. Of course he had corrected her. She had nodded sympathetically and carried on, not reacting to the news of a baby’s murder. Mikael had been all to happy to provide clarity on the woman’s beliefs and offer a substantial threat of violence later that night. Niklaus had crumbled.

Elijah had spent the entire night with Nik tight in his arms for fear of what his brother might do if left alone for even a second. To their father or to himself.)

“After all that...I can only assume never speaking of it again was the least painful option. I can hardly blame him for doing what he needed to do.”

Hayley played with the tassles on her sweater. “So he just…forgot about her?”

He thought of his brother’s recurring nightmares with the barely audible whimpers of _don’t touch her_ , the 52 years he spent cursed where he would scream that out loud for hours, the melancholy look on his face whenever he would pass people holding newborns.

“Oh, I sincerely doubt that.”

“What was her name?”

“If my brother ever gave her one, he never told us what it was. With everything that happened...he never truly mourned her, I fear.” He sighed and turned back to Hayley. “In any case, I hope that…this baby might be a way to save him from himself. Give him something of a...second chance.”

“I’m glad you feel that way.”

If another thing was certain, Elijah was increasingly disliking this witch. And my, did her plan (which sounded remarkably like blackmail) have some holes.

*******

“No. It’s impossible.”Indeed, it was not. Klaus would know. Personally, _intimately_ , he would know. “Vampires cannot procreate!”

Because, in his human form, he could. _He had_. And ever since Tatia’s blood was forced down his throat and his father’s sword shoved through his sternum, he no longer could.

It’s not like there hadn’t been opportunity. By the time condoms were even _invented_ during the 19th century, Klaus had had 800 years of sleeping around with men to get himself knocked up again. And nothing. Not even all the times (more than he would ever admit) that he had _hoped_ to find himself with child, all the times in the depths of his loneliness and misery that he had prayed to a god he didn’t believe in to give him a baby ( _to give him his daughter back_ ) and nothing.

So no, all this was bullshit, and truly was the cruelest joke anyone could play on him, and he had every intention of staking Elijah at least twice for being a part of it.

“But werewolves can!”

His mouth gaped like a dead fish as he struggled to find words. He turned to stare at Elijah. “Did you not tell her?”

“Magic made you a vampire,” the witch continued. “But you were born a werewolf.”

“You didn’t tell her, did you?”

“You’re the Original hybrid. The first of your kind. And this pregnancy…one of nature’s loopholes.”

Loop _...holes._

His heart clenched as the memory of what had happened all those years ago came unbidden to his mind. The memory of what had happened to his baby. Mikael ripping her from Esther’s arms and Klaus, unable to do _anything_ as his father broke her spine over his knee. That sound.

 _God, that sound_.

And the spirits wouldn’t bring her back. Her, a defenseless newborn! The purest creature on this Earth and the spirits would not grant her the life stolen from her, and this witch would dare speak to him of _loopholes?_

So, naturally, he did what he did best when he was upset. Explode.

He rounded on Hayley. “You’ve been with someone else, admit it!” he shouted at her. She recoiled from him ever so slightly even as Elijah stopped him with a hand on his chest. 

“I spent days held captive in an alligator bayou because they think that I’m carrying some magical miracle baby,” she snapped right back. “Don’t you think I would have fessed up if it wasn’t yours?”

…That was fair.

“My sister gave her life to confirm it,” the witch went on (Klaus wanted to rip her head off). “Because of Jane-Anne’s sacrifice, the lives of this girl and her baby are now controlled by us. If you don’t help us then so help me this girl will not live to see her first maternity dress!”

“Wait, what?!” came Hayley’s stunned remark. Then Elijah was saying something about killing Marcel himself, but no no the witch had a clear plan you all have to do it her way, blah blah.

Klaus’s head was spinning.

“And there are rules!” the witch finished. Her voice blurred in his head with a much more sinister one.

“How dare you…” he hissed. “ _Threaten. Me!_ With what you wrongfully perceive to be my weaknesses—“ He barely restrained himself from striking Elijah’s head from his shoulders at his brother’s eye roll. “But I won’t stand here and listen to any more of your _lies!_ ”

“Niklaus.” Elijah’s strong voice stalled his exit. He turned back to face his brother. “ _Listen_.”

And he could hear it, god _damn_ it, he could hear it. (What he wouldn’t have given to hear his own baby’s heartbeat when he’d been pregnant, and what he wouldn’t have given to press his ear to his daughter’s chest and hear it _then_ ). His eyes stung.

And his brother had the _nerve_ to smile at him (just like he had all those years ago as he comforted his half dead pregnant brother sobbing on a log in the middle of the woods, _fuck_ ) and Klaus was crying for real and _he just couldn’t do this again_ , plain and simple. 

“Kill her, and the baby. What do I care...”

As he stormed away in a rage, tears fully pouring down his face by then, he wondered if that wasn’t the biggest lie he’d ever told in his life.

*******

“So much for ‘saving him from himself,’” Hayley hissed at Elijah. “Screw this! I’m out of here.”

Elijah could hardly blame Hayley for wanting to get the hell. But they wouldn’t let her leave.

“No one touches the girl,” he warned. “I’ll fix this.” He would. He _had to_.

*******

Of course Elijah followed him.

“It’s a trick,” Klaus hissed.

“No, brother, it’s a gift. It’s a chance, it’s our chance!”

Klaus was not in the mood for this. “To what?”

“To start over. To take back everything we lost. Everything that was _taken_ from us.”

Klaus blinked and another tear ran down his cheek at the insinuation. “Don’t you dare.”

“Our own parents came to despise us—“

“Oh, is that all?”

“Our family was ruined, _we_ were ruined.” Ruined. That was a pretty good word to describe it, actually. “This is all that you have ever wanted.” He quickly corrected himself, holding out a placating hand at the spark of rage in Klaus’s eyes. “All that _we_ have ever wanted. As a family.”

Elijah could barely contain his joy. that much was obvious, what with the twinkle in his eye, the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Honestly, Klaus should be happy, too, because Elijah was right, this is what he’d wanted (he didn’t even have to give birth again, he should at the very least be grateful for _that_ ). So why wasn’t he happy?

He stared back at his brother, allowing anger to cover his pain. “I will not be manipulated.”

He tried to walk away. Elijah was always trying to get him to walk away from a fight instead of starting one, he should be proud of Klaus for not immediately ripping every witch’s head off their shoulders, why wouldn’t he just let him _leave_ and drown his memories in a few bottles of whiskey? 

“So what? With them this girl and her child, _your child_ , live!” Elijah looked so proud of himself. Klaus wanted to vomit.

“I’m gonna kill every last one of them,” he replied cheerily and shoved his brother, turning the other way. Only to find that Elijah was _still_ in front of him.

“And then what? You return to Mystic Falls to resume your life as the hated one? The evil hybrid? Is it so important to you that people quake at the sound of your name?”

Klaus was done with this conversation. Klaus had been done with this conversation. “People quake with fear because I have the power to make them afraid! What will this child offer me? Will it guarantee me power?”

Because, truly, if he had no power, he could do nothing to protect the child. And if he couldn’t protect it, then he would surely lose it. That he could not, /would not/, do. Not again.

He should’ve just walked away from Elijah.

“Family is power, Niklaus. Love, loyalty, that’s power! We swore that to one another a thousand years ago before life, before _Mikael_ , tore away what little humanity you had left. Before ego, before anger, paranoia, created in this person before me someone I can barely even recognize as my own brother.”

_You know what, Elijah, you try living through what I’ve lived through. What I’ve been /put/ through, and see if you come out the other side with your humanity still intact._

_You try watching your baby girl die right in front of you, and then again and again and again for 52 years every /fucking/ day, and dream of it for a thousand years after that, see her face in every baby you come across, and we’ll see if you still have a heart_. 

He never did tell anyone exactly what it was that tormented him then. His siblings had an idea, he knew, but he never really told them what he saw. Why would he? Why _should_ he?

But the thing that really killed him, every day, was that his daughter had been murdered not five feet in front of him and he hadn’t been able to do anything to save her.

Klaus stared at Elijah as he continued to talk about family or some shit Klaus wasn’t even sure he believed was real anymore (at least not for them. At least not for _him_ ).

“Always and forever. I am asking you to stay here, I will help you, and I will stand by you, and I will be your brother! We will build a home here together.” Elijah took Klaus’s face in his hands. “And I promise you, what happened to your daughter a thousand years ago will _not_ happen again here. Mikael is _dead_ , Niklaus. He cannot hurt you, _us_ , anymore. So save this girl, save your child. You have a second chance at this, Niklaus, _take it_!”

Didn’t that sound familiar. Didn’t that sound like what Elijah had promised him back then. Don’t worry, Nik, I won’t let Mikael hurt you anymore, I’ll grow a pair and stand up for my little brother, but when he tells me to get lost I’ll just get up and leave and let him kill your baby. And then when you actually turn into a werewolf I’ll actually _help_ him curse you.

Klaus looked his brother in the face and hissed, “ _No_.”

Elijah let him walk away.

*******

Elijah really couldn’t imagine how painful this must be for his brother. His daughter’s death had been the single most painful thing that had ever happened to him. The thing that had truly destroyed the brother Elijah once knew. That thing that first put Klaus on the path that made him the monster that he was.

Elijah could understand not wanting to feel that pain again, but he wouldn’t! Why couldn’t Niklaus see that?

“Given a chance at happiness, he runs in the other direction,” he told his sister.

“Well that child, if it’s even his, is better off without him!”

“But he’s not better off without that child, Rebekah, if the past thousand years have been anything to go by.” He was met with silence, so he continued. “And neither are we.”

“At what point in your immortal life will you stop searching for his redemption? Our brother died with his baby a thousand years ago, and he’s not coming back any more than his daughter is, Elijah.”

“With this child, he might, Rebekah! If anything can redeem him, this can.”

“But it won’t.”

Elijah took a deep breath. “I will stop searching for his redemption when I believe there is none to be found, lest I forget that I walked out on our brother when he needed us the most. You would do well to remember that you did, too.” And with that he hung up.

Perhaps that wasn’t fair. It was true they had done so much to try and make up for that one grievous error (but it wasn’t just once, was it? Out of all the years Mikael had taken his hatred out on Niklaus, Elijah could count on one hand the number of times _anyone at all_ had intervened.)

Elijah would regret that to his dying day. He wished he could find the words to tell his brother how sorry he was. But then again, that didn’t really mean jack shit, did it?

So he did the only thing he could do, which was right his brother’s wrongs, clean up his mess, and try to talk some sense into him. Or, if he had to, beat it into him. 

No, Elijah was not above that. 

*******

So, Klaus continued to do what he did best, which was of course make a right mess of things.

He…kind of tore one of Marcel’s lackey’s throats out…oops.

So what, he was feeling emotional.

He watched a man paint. The bartender from earlier stood next to him and read his heart to its very core with one look. He left her standing in the street so she wouldn’t see the tears on his face. And he got drunk. Very drunk. Which was, of course, when Elijah found him again.

“Have I not made clear my desire to be left alone?”

“You demand to be left alone at least once a decade. Your words have ceased to have impact.”

And such misery was welling in his chest that he just couldn’t stand it, so he threw his liquor bottle against what appeared to be a covered piano and turned to face his brother.

“Why must you keep harping on about the baby? That child will never be born. In fact, Hayley will be dead already.”

Elijah slammed him against a carriage. “You will not walk away from this!”

“Let me go!”

“I will not!” Elijah threw him into a table hard enough to break it, so naturally Klaus returned the favor, throwing him into an iron fence hard enough to make a dent.

It was only fair.

Elijah picked himself up and yanked out a pole. “Even if I have to spend eternity saving you from your own wretched, vile self.”

Klaus was expecting many things, but he was not expecting his brother to beat him.

“If I have to beat you as father used to beat you to remind you of your own humanity! To care, about anything!”

Oh, that struck a nerve, and Elijah knew it, too. Klaus felt totally vindicated in taking the pole from his brother and responding in kind He hit him hard in the jaw and Elijah stayed down.

Klaus was too tired for this.

“You are beyond pathetic, Elijah.” His voice sounded as exhausted as he felt.

His brother wiped the blood off his mouth. “Who’s more pathetic? The one who has hope to make his family whole…” He paused dramatically. Klaus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Or the coward who can only see the world through his own fear?”

 _A very credible fear_ , he would be willing to argue at literally _any_ other time.

“I haven’t cared about anything in centuries. Why have you?”

“Well, because I failed you.” Klaus’s ice cold heart clenched at his brother’s words. He hadn’t been expecting that either. “Because the first time our father laid a hand on you, I should’ve struck him dead. And if I couldn’t do it then, then every time thereafter I should have done something, anything! I should have never walked out on you and your daughter.”

Klaus shut his eyes against the pain and a tear or two rolled down his cheek. “Elijah, _don’t_ —“

“No, Niklaus, let me say this. And I could say I’m sorry until the cows come home and it will never make up for how I failed you. How I failed my niece, who I promised you I would protect with my life. But if I couldn’t do that, then at the very least I promised you always and forever, family above all. I didn’t keep it then, but on my life and all that is good I will keep it now. I cannot imagine how painful all this must be for you, what it must bring up, but I _will not_ let you walk away from it. Always and forever, Niklaus.”

The onslaught of emotions was too much for Nik to handle. So he did what he normally did and just opted out. Buried them deep and laughed at Elijah, voice betraying the true misery brewing deep in what used to be his soul. But he did help him up.

“You are a sentimental fool,” he murmured in his brother’s ear.

“Perhaps. But I’ve lasted the long in spite of it, haven’t I?”

Finally, _finally_ , Elijah left him alone… for a couple of hours at least.

He found him again on a park bench at 4 in the morning where, rather inspired by the artist from earlier in the night, he had been once again attempting to draw his daughter.

Even after all these years, he could still remember every detail of her tiny (dead) face. Perhaps that was why he could never finish a drawing of her. He had never seen her alive, and he just could not bear to draw her the only way he had seen her.

When his tears had once again ruined the paper, he gave up and just sat there, watching the night traffic until he was left completely and blissfully alone.

At which point, of course, his brother reappeared.

“Here to give me another pep talk on the joys of fatherhood?”

“I’ve said all I needed to say.”

Klaus hadn’t. So he stalled for a bit, talking about the city, how much he liked it, all the while the words that had needed saying for a good long while sat on the tip of his tongue. Elijah indulged him for a while before finally prompting him.

“What is on your mind, brother?”

What was on his mind. What indeed. He didn’t care to talk about what was actually on his mind, or on the damp paper crumpled in his fist. So he picked the first thing that came to mind.

“This town was my home once. And in my absence, Marcel has got anything I ever wanted. Power, loyalty…family. I made him in my image and he has bettered me.”

Ah yes, the topic of his adopted son. Reason #85,000 why a large part of him didn’t want to go through with this.

“I want what he has. I want it _back_.” He threw in an ‘I want to be king’ for good measure. Throw his brother off the scent.

“So is that all this child means to you? A grab for power?”

Klaus pondered, not for the first time that night, ripping his brother’s head off. _Of course not, you idiot._

This child could never replace his daughter, but…it did almost seem like a second chance. But he couldn’t bring himself to say that.

“What does it mean to you?” He cursed the weakness in his voice.

“I think this child could offer you the once thing you never believed you had.”

Oh boy. This was going down a road Klaus did not want to go. After a thousand years, he was so _sick_ of crying. “And what’s that?”

“The unconditional love of a family.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck _fuck—_

“Tell Sophie Deveraux we have a deal.”

Klaus wasn’t looking at him, was so sick of his brother seeing him cry, but he could sense Elijah was smiling. 

“I’m proud of you,” Elijah whispered, and then Klaus was being pulled into a hug. If he blinked and a few more tears spilled down his cheeks, then well, no one was there to see it. “I swear to you, brother, what happened to your daughter will not happen again.” Klaus didn’t respond, and instead rested his ear against Elijah’s chest and listened to his heartbeat.

They stayed like that for longer than Klaus would care to admit.

“I don’t even have to give birth again,” Klaus murmured at one point. Elijah’s laugh rumbling in his chest was almost as comforting as the sound of his heart.

*******

Elijah was right. What happened to his daughter would not happen to this child. Klaus would ensure it. But to ensure it, he would have to eliminate any and all weaknesses, of which he only had one. 

Elijah.

Who would just have to forgive him the dagger in his chest and the trip down to Marcel’s. Call it karma, retribution, whatever you want. Elijah promised his life to protect his child, so it was only fair that he kept his promise, now wasn’t it?

 

**_El Fin_ **


	2. I Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hayley Marshall's first few weeks under the "protection" of the Mikaelsons
> 
> 1x02

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, any dialogue that can be attributed to an episode is not mine and I do not claim it to be so. Thank you for clicking on this fic!

 

_“You gonna kill a wolf?”_

_“Just a little one.”_

*******

It was oddly cold where she sat on the park bench that night. Which was weird, because as long as she’d been in New Orleans, it had never been cold. Maybe it was just the nerves.

Two drops cut with jimson weed in some hot tea and then this whole ordeal would be over. Just like that.

“C’mon, Hayley...one upset stomach and all this stupid drama is ancient history…” she murmured to herself. It was crazy how major a decision one sip of her favorite tea had become.

_This was for the best. She was going to do it, she was. Here we go._

She paused with the cup halfway to her lips.

 _Fuck_.

An ominous rustling distracted her further. She shouldn’t be here. Whatever her choice, she had to decide now.

She didn’t get the chance, seeing as how a nice group of three vampires had appeared to make her day even worse than it already was. _No wolves allowed in the quarter_ , they said. _Come with us,_ they said. Like hell.

She burned one with the tea and turned to face down the other two, just then beginning to wonder how in the hell she was going to get out of this one.

It turned out that the answer to that was quite simple: Rebekah.

“Now that is a terrible way to treat a pregnant lady.” She dropped the hearts in her hand unceremoniously, a look of mild disgust on her face. “I hate bad manners.”

Hayley couldn’t decide whether to be amused, grateful, mildly afraid, or annoyed at the missed opportunity.

******

The lecture from Klaus was annoying to say the least. At worst, it was pretty offensive. She tried to focus on the “annoying” considering she had to put up with him for the rest of her life.

In all honesty, Hayley couldn’t stand him. As far as she was concerned the death of his firstborn child, while indeed a major trauma, did nothing to excuse his condescending, controlling, and borderline abusive behavior. And she couldn’t even call him out on it for fear he would treat her worse than he already did.

Rebekah, on the other hand...

If Hayley had her way, she would never want to see any of these people again, but she appreciated Rebekah standing up for her.

She had just been standing inconspicuously in the background, listening to Rebekah scream at her bother and trying not to draw attention to herself when a particular phrase caught her attention.

“You obviously don’t give a damn about the child or Elijah because what have you done to honor it?!”

The air around them seemed to drop ten degrees in time with the darkening of Klaus’s face.

“I have done everything!” he hissed, real venom in his voice. “Let me spell it out for you, shall I?”

He launched into a particularly long-winded explanation about his grand plan, ending with him dragging the last semi-alive vampire into the house to be drained of vervain and compelled. A pleasant experience, she was sure.

It was a decent plan, Hayley had to at least grudgingly admit, but all of them could have helped withit, you know, collectively. Like the family they so often touted. If only Klaus had gotten of his paranoid, controlling high horse.

But why would he do that.

“Does anyone have any more questions?” he snapped. “No? Perfect, because I have a question. Hayley.”

Her blood turned to ice.

“What were you doing in the bloody French Quarter in the first place?”

Was that a hint of concern in his voice? Hell if she knew and damned if she cared. This was her freedom he was encroaching on. She remained silent and glared at him.

“ _Answer me!_ ” he roared at her.

“Leave her be,” Rebekah started to say, but Hayley had had enough. He was the father of her child and if they were supposed to coparent, then this awful treatment of her had to stop.  So she told him the truth, just to take him down a notch. 

“You wanna know what I was doing? I was buying _poison._ So I could put your little baby out of its misery.”

It became very clear very quickly that she had made a terrible mistake.

Hayley was familiar with post traumatic stress. Pick any wolf anywhere and they either had it or knew someone who did.

Klaus, for example, had it and had it bad. That much was obvious, what with the crippling paranoia, the mood swings and outrageous anger, the rattling nightmares…

She didn’t know if he knew he had it or not and supposed it didn’t really matter.

More than once since she’d arrived there, she’d awoken to hearing Klaus screaming down the hall. The first time, on the very first night she’d been ‘under their protection’, she’d flown out of bed when it woke her, bolting down the hall because she might hate Klaus, but he was keeping her alive and no one deserved to be tortured enough to produce a scream like that—

Elijah had stopped her before she even got close, appearing right in front of her and damn near giving her a heart attack.

“What—“

He held a finger up to his lips, _hush_ , and mouthed _nightmares_.

Oh. 

“Aren’t you going to, like, comfort him or something? That sounded bad,” she whispered.

“Not unless I want to get my head ripped off,” Elijah answered softly, mouth quirking in a small smile. “Go back to sleep.”

Grudgingly, she did.

 A few nights later she had been up late reading in the kitchen when someone practically fell down the stairs, scaring the everliving shit out of her. A few moments later, a very harried Klaus appeared in the doorway. 

Hayley took a calming breath, a hand over her pounding heart.

“Klaus, you scared me!” she breathed, relieved she wasn’t about to be attacked by an intruder.

Quickly though, she began to wonder if she might still be attacked.

Klaus was staring at her like he barely recognized her and didn’t quite understand that she was actually there. His undershirt was soaked through with sweat and she could hear his heavy breathing from across the room. _Another nightmare_ , she thought as she watched him lean against the doorframe for support.

“It’s okay, Klaus,” she said reassuringly and as calmly as she could manage, remembering some of the wolves she used to live with back in Appalachia and how their families would calm them down. “You’re in your house in New Orleans. You’re safe. It’s not happening again.”

She really had no idea what “it” was. Sure, she could guess, but at the end of the day it didn’t really matter. Klaus stared at her for a moment longer before seemingly snapping out of it, drawing in a deep, shaky breath he didn’t need and glaring at her. He stormed over to the cupboard and grabbed a glass to fill with water. She watched his hand shake as he drank it.

He noticed her staring. “What are you looking at?” he growled, real menace in his voice.

Hayley quickly went back to her book, only to be spooked again at the sound of glass breaking. She spun around to see that Klaus had either dropped his glass or that it had shattered in his hand from how tightly he’d been holding it. She couldn’t tell which. 

Klaus himself looked quite rattled as he stared at the broken glass before he turned back to Hayley.

“Don’t mention this to _anyone_ ,” he snarled before storming off and leaving the broken glass on the floor.

 _That’s not a safety hazard at all,_ Hayley thought darkly. She cleaned it up because she, unlike him, tried to be a decent person., no matter what was going on in her life.

After that, she heeded Elijah’s advise to pretend that Klaus’s PTSD symptoms didn’t exist for her own safety, though part of her wondered if that very method of avoiding the problem is what allowed Klaus to get so bad in the first place.

So Hayley knew exactly what the look of horror and agony that crossed his face was. A flash. One which quickly morphed into fury.

She knew well enough at that point that she was in for a screaming session and accepted that. She’d wanted to hurt him, just a little, for how he’d been hurting her. She’d let him scream and then inform him that she’d changed her mind, but that he’d do well to treat her better. Maybe that would knock some sense into him.

What she didn’t expect was that he would throw her into a nearby wall and nearly choke the life out of her. Ironic, no? She would have likely appreciated it more if she hadn’t been so busy, well, getting strangled.

“Nik!” Rebekah shouted. “ _Nik!_ ” She ripped them apart. “Keep your hands off her! She is pregnant for God’s sake! All of this fuss about not wanting the child and then the second she tells you she’s ready to get rid of it…”

Hayley was quite busy coughing out her bruised windpipe, but even then she couldn’t help but notice that the powerful, awful Klaus Mikaelson looked like little more than a tiny child as he stared at his sister, breath coming quick and shallow, eyes wide, a few tears on his cheeks.

“It’s okay to care.” Rebekah’s voice was exasperated, but gentle. “It’s okay to want this. It’s all Elijah and I have ever wanted for you.” After a few moments, she continued, “It’s not a betrayal.”

Klaus looked away from her then, a few more tears glimmering in his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Rebekah sat down next to him when he collapsed heavily onto the stairs, eyes fixed on the floor.

“I gave Elijah to Marcel,” he said quietly.

“What?”

Yes, Hayley hated this. Their family was awful. It truly seemed like all they knew how to do was fight. She wanted no part of it, and yet…

And yet.

Hayley found Rebekah out on the porch later that night and sat down in the rocking chair next to her.

“I know you don’t know me very well…but thanks. I appreciate what you did in there.”

Rebekah smiled tiredly. “Us girls have got to look out for each other.”

They sat in silence for a long time.

“Hayley?” Rebekah asked after a while. “Did Elijah…ever tell you about Nik?”

“What, that he had a baby who was murdered? Yeah. Yeah he did, and that’s awful, but it doesn’t excuse what he just did in there. Or really anything that he’s done.”

“No…no it doesn’t.”

*******

The last person Hayley was expecting to see when she woke up the next morning was Klaus. Especially not Klaus holding the remaining vial of wolfsbane.

“I didn’t use it,” she clarified quickly, not wanting a repeat of the previous night minus a Rebekah to save her from Klaus’s hybrid strength. 

He startled ever so slightly when he heard her. “You’re awake.”

She rolled her eyes and sat up. “I could hardly sleep all night. This house is like a freaking swamp sauna.”

She looked over at Klaus, who had moved to stand by the window. He didn’t appear to have heard her comment about the lack of air conditioning.

“What stopped you?” he asked, melancholy bleeding into his voice as he stared aimlessly out the window, wolfsbane still held loosely in his hand. “You could have been free of all of this. Of me.”

“Yeah, well…when I was fighting off those vampires, I realized I wasn’t just protecting myself. That if push came to shove, I wouldn’t let anyone hurt it. Maybe that has to do with being abandoned myself, but…”

Klaus stared at the floor for several minutes before speaking again. “Hayley, I... I wanted to explain to you what happened last night.”

Of course he did. Hayley scoffed, not in the mood for his bullshit. “You mean excuse? Nothing can excuse you trying to strangle me!”

She watched as his fingers drummed anxiously on his abdomen.

“Explain…not excuse. And also...apologize.”

…Huh. 

She waited while he floundered for further words. Let him suffer just a little more for the hell he’d been putting her through.

When he still couldn’t find the words after a good couple of minutes, she took pity on him.

“Look, Klaus…I know.”

He looked up at her. “Know what?”

“You’re going to tell me that you had a baby who died and that’s why you reacted badly.”

“How did you—“

“Elijah.” He briefly looked rather pissed, but she soldiered on. “He told me back in the bayou to also try and explain some of your frankly atrocious behavior. So I get that this must be hard for you, but that doesn’t make it okay to do what you’ve been doing.”

Klaus swallowed heavily. “Fair enough.” They remained in silence for a long moment before Klaus spoke again. “What can I do to make it up to you?”

“You can start by never doing it again. What happened to you was awful and it sucks, but it doesn’t give you license to hurt me. You can also treat the people who are trying to help you better, like your siblings. Got it?”

Klaus nodded. If Hayley didn’t know better, she would say he seemed almost penitent. She let him stew a bit more before she continued.

“...You can…also answer stay there and answer a couple questions for me.”

“Questions?”

“Pregnancy related.”

He snorted and looked away. “You might do better asking someone who was more recently pregnant.”

“Well, I can’t leave the house. And there’s no WiFi, so.”

He cracked a small smile. “A fair point...Well then, fire away.”

She couldn’t believe she’d actually asked _him_ of all people or that he’d actually agreed. Sue her, she’d had a few thing weighing on her mind, and if he was the only one who could ease that…Also bonding over shared experiences might be a decent way to get him to see her as something to be cared about rather than just a vessel.

“If I’m not already morning sick, am I in the clear?”

He stared at her, expression unreadable. “First of all, I just want you to appreciate how unfair it is that you’ve so far escaped that particular symptom.”

Hayley laughed. 

Klaus smiled a real smile, quite possibly the first she’d ever seen on him, and continued, “I don’t honestly know. I was sick for most of mine from the very beginning, so maybe? Or maybe not?  Who’s to say, really.”

Hayley nodded. “Okay, second question: how bad is childbirth? Like really?”

“Would you like the honest answer or the one you want to hear?”

She rolled her eyes. “Honest! If I wanted bullshit, I’d have asked the witches.”

He huffed a laugh. “Alright then. It’s bad. It’s really bad.”

“Even for wolves? I mean we turn every month. It couldn’t possibly be worse than that.”

Klaus sat down on the end of the bed and shook his head, giving her an amused look.

Hayley frowned. “So you’re telling me it’s worse.”

Klaus pondered that for a moment. “I would say…you can’t really compare the two. When you turn it’s like a staccato pain as each bone breaks, right? Childbirth is more constant and slow and draining... Just take my word for it, it really hurts.”

“So it’s not true that you forget the pain after you give birth?”

Klaus laughed at that. “No, that is such bullshit, and I’ll tell you right now, you continue to feel it for weeks afterward.” Hayley groaned and Klaus smiled at her. “Just so you’re not caught off guard.”

“Ugh, is it really worth it?”

... _God_ , Hayley had no idea what possessed her to say that. She quickly backpedalled. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”

Her apology did nothing to ease the melancholy on Klaus’s face or in his quiet voice. “When you find out, you tell me.”

“…Any…advice on making it through the ‘magical experience of childbirth’ the witches keep telling me about?” she asked after a while, trying to recover lost ground. It took a while for him to answer her.

“…Take the drugs.”

That surprised her. “What?!” she asked with a laugh.

He glanced over at her, a wry smile returning to his face. “Just take the drugs. Fuck all that ‘natural’ bullshit. I did it natural. 0/10 would not recommend.”

“Duly noted. So that means I get to go to a hospital?”

Klaus nodded. “I almost died in childbirth. I won’t risk the same fate befalling you.”

If it wasn’t the absolute bare minimum, Hayley would say that was almost halfway decent of him.

“Well, thanks for all the reassurance…I guess.” She let a good bit of sarcasm bleed into her voice as she said it.

“Anytime.”

His face was almost kind as he left her.

 

 

**El Fin**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Leave kudos if you liked it, comment to let me know what you think, and stay tuned! There's plenty more where this came from <3 <3<3 :)))


	3. The Irony of It All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Klaus tells Cami about what happened under the worst of circumstances

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coda 1x15
> 
> I appreciate y'all's patience! Hope you enjoy

Cami was in way over her head. Way way _way_ over her head.

“Feed him from the wrist,” Elijah had told her after _fishing around_ in his sibling’s _abdominal cavity_ for a _magic knife_. “And try to keep him from killing his younger sister.”

Totally a normal day for the Mikaelson family, apparently. And to be honest, she hated all of it, but her uncle’s life rested on this family’s help. For him, she could put up with them one more time.

Klaus slept on and off, still weak from the knife and the vervain in Cami’s blood. Didn’t stop him from intermittently retelling the tale of the day Rebekah and Marcel brought his father to town.

It also didn’t stop him from inserting a few unnecessary tidbits.

“Why am I not surprised you like opera?” she stuttered, more than mildly uncomfortable after his rather raunchy retelling of the morning leading up to the end of his time in New Orleans.

“Well, I’ve always had a particular soft spot for _Les Huguenots,”_ he said with a wry smirk. “I like the story. It was a…tale of forbidden love. A Romeo and Juliet of sorts.” His voice turned melancholy. “On the day they are to marry, family and long-festering hatred intervene and thousands are massacred. A father even kills his own child….I could almost appreciate the irony…”

Klaus Mikaelson was not a good person, but sometimes Cami couldn’t help but wonder who would be having lived the life he had.

She watched as he opened and closed his mouth a few times, shifting nervously, as if he had something to say but couldn’t find the words to say it.

*******

She found him later as he was pouring himself a generous glass of Scotch.

“Not sure that helps.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Not sure it doesn’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “You wanna self-medicate your self-pity, fine. Better Scotch than my blood, no matter what Elijah says.”

He rounded on her without cause. “Don’t speak to me of Elijah!”

Cami got rather sick of his self-righteousness sometimes. 

“He loves you,” she reminded him with as much patience as she could muster.

“Yes, he does. And he proves it time and again. Even when my father enlisted him to kill me.” Cami flinched at that. Holy hell, this family was fucked up. “Elijah has always carried guilt for that night for not stopping our father. I told him not to blame himself. When your father wants to kill you, he wants to kill you.”

It pained her how casually he said that.

He trailed off in a whisper. “Nothing you can do about it…”

She didn’t know why, but she got the sense that that night wasn’t the only incident on his mind in that moment. Many a time he had regaled stories of his past. Gruesome, awful stories of the abuse he had suffered. None of them ever made his hands shake like the one holding his glass was then.

Before she could think of anything to say, his phone rang. 

Rebekah and Marcel had been spotted in town, he said casually as he knocked over a statue to reveal a nasty looking wooden stake. White oak, he said. And then he was gone.

Oh, God.

*******

She found him casually eating someone on the street.

“What are you doing?!” she shouted, running over to try and stop him. Too late, she realized as Klaus dropped the lifeless body of a tourist, mouth stained with blood.

“Well if you have to ask, you obviously haven’t been paying attention. I’m going to kill my sister. But first, I need sustenance without the added bonus of vervain.”

Her heart rate kicked up a notch. She had run out of leverage and now was running out of time to dissuade Klaus from making the biggest mistake of his very long life.

So, Cami pulled out the only ammo she had left to try and knock some sense into this fool of a man. She told him how she had felt after finding out what he’d done to her, how she’d wanted to kill him, but resisted.

“I stopped and thought! I weighed the good I see in you versus the horrible things I know you’ve done, and I realized if I hurt you, I’d be filled with a terrible regret. You will, too, if you hurt your sister, _your sister!_ ”

He was still there. He was still listening to her. And maybe, just maybe, that meant she was reaching him. So she kept going.

“As a person who has lost a sibling, as someone who has _felt_ that pain, you won’t survive it if you’re the one that kills her.”

He shook his head slowly, not breaking eye contact. “I’ll tell you what I almost didn’t survive, love. My sister bringing the most vile creature ever to have walked the Earth down upon me.”

She tried, _tried_ , to make him see how he was becoming his father by doing what Mikael had done to him. He didn’t appreciate it.

“You know, I’ve been called every shade of monster, but that’s new.” He fixed her with a humorless smile. “Do you really not know?”

Cami frowned, apprehensive. “Know what?”

“I’m stunned, really, seeing as Elijah has seen it become public knowledge over the past few months. Here, I’ve been operating under the knowledge that someone told you, so I never bothered to recount it myself.”

“ _Know what_ , Klaus?”

He smiled bitterly, but didn’t answer her question. “And Mikael? Mikael was the monster monsters were afraid of.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along with him. “Come, I’ll show you.”

*******

He took her to the opera house. Told her how it was his father who burnt it down in 1919. Told her how he ran.

“Beaten like the dog my father believed me to be.”

They lived. But all that they had built died. Cami…well, Cami couldn’t imagine.

“That is what my father took from me that night.” When she looked Klaus in the eye, she saw a steel she hadn’t seen before. She felt the hand on her arm shake. When he continued, his voice was pure venom. “But that is hardly the worst he has ever done. You know me too well to think me so petty.” ...Did she, though? “That is hardly what angers me so!”

He let go of her arm.

“No, the worst he has ever done he did before we were made into vampires! The worst he has ever done he did _in front of_ Elijah and Rebekah. They knew what he did, they were witness to it, and that is why Rebekah will die for what she did. Because _she knew_ , and she still called him out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness and oppression! She called him, after he ruined me, _ruined my life_ , for her own personal gain!”

Cami had never seen Klaus so upset. He was quite literally quaking with rage, tears dripping intermittently down his cheeks.

“What did he do?” she whispered, voice trembling with just a hint of fear.

Klaus calmed down abruptly and stared at her for a long time, seemingly paralyzed by her question. She barely heard him when he finally did answer her, his whisper was so quiet.

“He killed my baby.”

....Oh. My. God.

A thousand thoughts ran through Cami’s mind. Klaus had previously had a child? He’d never mentioned them, though clearly with good reason. And if that was true, then what hope did she have of ever convincing Klaus not to kill Rebekah, especially with Hayley’s child on the way...

She watched him stare at nothing, clearly caught up in a memory, tears still coursing down his cheeks. She knew better than to disturb someone as unpredictable as him during a flashback, so instead she resorted to a gentle call of his name.

“Klaus?” she whispered, moving herself so she was more within his line of sight. And see her he did. His eyes flickered up to hers. He said nothing.

“What happened?” she asked, voice nearly inaudible amongst the sounds of the city. He heard her nonetheless.

“I can’t say it…” he answered in a voice equally as quiet, eyes wide and haunted with trauma.

“That’s okay. You don’t ever have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

He seemed to shake himself a little, face hardening. “No. No, I can’t speak it, but if you’re ever going to understand the horror of what Rebekah did than you need to see what happened.”

Before she could even form another thought, Klaus reached out and touched her temple.

And she saw it all. She saw who she assumed to be Klaus’s mother screaming at her son for getting pregnant (the fact that _he’d_ borne the child himself was a whole other can of worms that she was in no way ready to open at this time) for outing her secret infidelity, which subsequently outed Klaus to his father as a bastard and a werewolf all in one go.

She watched as Mikael nearly beat Klaus to death in the middle of the town square for dishonoring their family simply by existing. She watched as Rebekah, seemingly too stunned by the day’s turn of events, did nothing to stop him.

She witnessed the truly toxic home environment Klaus endured in the following months.

She saw him staggering through the woods in the agony of labor as he sought to escape his father’s scrutiny. She watched him almost die in childbirth, only to not even get to hold his newborn daughter before Mikael brutally murdered her. Right in front of Klaus.

If he had been planning to show her more, she didn’t get to see it as she wrenched away from him with a half bitten off scream, the image of Klaus’s dead newborn in Mikael’s hands burned to the inside of her eyelids. 

Klaus let his hand drop, eyes fixed on the ground to his left. 

Cami stood there, eyes wide with shock, hands covering her mouth. 

“So perhaps you see now,” he began. When he looked back up at her, there was no light in his eyes. “Why I cannot forgive Rebekah for this indiscretion. Nevertheless, I assure you, Cami, I will not terrorize my sister and her lover for centuries. Nor will I humiliate, torment, or dehumanize them. I will certainly not kill those closest to them. No, none of that. I will simply and quickly end them.”

“Klaus, wait!” she shouted after him, but by then he was already gone.

 


	4. Vindicated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus has lost his mind, Rebekah chooses her words poorly, and Elijah wonders how they ended up here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coda 1x16
> 
> This one and Ch. 3 are new (7/9/19)

 

“GET AWAY FROM HER!”

Elijah had been expecting Niklaus to be furious. He had every right to be absolutely livid given what Rebekah and Marcel had done. But that did not mean Elijah was going to let him kill their sister.

Their brother’s silhouette was menacing in the dark cemetery, his breath clouding the cold air around him. As he stepped closer, his face was oddly calm, but it was his eyes that troubled Elijah. His gaze was fixed on Rebekah, but even so it was a million miles away.

The thousand yard stare.

Niklaus was unpredictable on his best days, anddangerously violent and volatile on his worst, but Elijah had not seen him approach anyone with that stare since the last time he had witnessed his brother face down their father.

Niklaus was dead to the world, was in no way himself, and because of that Elijah legitimately feared for his sister’s life.

His little brother’s eyes went black, irises shining gold. “ _She’s mine.”_

Elijah tightened his grip on the Tunde blade and hissed, baring his own fangs.

He loved his brother to a fault, but such permanent violence against his family? This he would not allow.

Niklaus calmed suddenly, black veins disappearing from around his eyes, demeanor doing a complete 180 as he twirled a glinting stake in his hand.

“Elijah, he’s got a white oak stake,” Rebekah whispered from where she stood behind him, fear making her voice tremble ever so slightly.

“Brought it for you, sister,” Klaus drawled, pointing the damned thing at her. Elijah watched his shoulders tense and his face go even blanker. He had to remove the stressor. Now.

“Get out of his sight,” Elijah murmured. “Your presence only serves to antagonize him. Leave him to me, _now.”_

Rebekah fled, and Niklaus’s ire was turned on him, which was preferable. He could handle his brother.

With Rebekah gone, Elijah tried desperately to calm him, to no avail. His attempts to make his brother see reason were only serving to anger him further.

“You would side with that _traitor_ over me?”

Elijah held out his hands in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner. “I refuse to choose sides, but I will not let you harm our sister.”

Klaus snorted, white oak gripped ever the more tightly in his hand. “Have you truly forgotten, brother? Do you truly fail to understand the extent of this betrayal?”

As he said, Niklaus was not out of line in his fury. Upon hearing of his sister’s actions, he too had felt his heart drop out the bottom of his chest, more livid than he had been in years. 

After everything, how could she? She had been there, _how could she?_

Still, she needn’t die for it. They had all felt too much death already.

As he saw it, there were two paths Elijah could take. The safe one, which would require him play entirely on defense, or the...other one.

“No, Niklaus, I have not forgotten. I have not forgotten the scars on your back from all the times father beat you, nor your screams as my niece was murdered.”

It was a gamble, but one Elijah was willing to take if it had the effect he hoped it would. Such graphic language had in the past forced his brother into debilitating flashbacks. Livid as Niklaus was, Elijah did not doubt that Klaus would put that stake through Elijah’s chest given a shot at Rebekah. Though it pained him to do it, incapacitating his brother with the memories of his traumas would give Elijah the upper hand he needed hopefully get the chance to disarm and restrain his brother and keep everyone safe.

Klaus flinched. Just barely, he flinched, but the haunted look that past over his face told Elijah that he had succeeded in drawing up unpleasant memories. He didn’t know what exactly it was the rattled his brother so, but it got him. Every time.

Now to see if it worked for him, or against him. Because there was always the chance that such action would only enrage Niklaus further. At which point both of them might very well end up very dead.

His brother appeared to shake it off and continued with his posturing. “We cannot leave this cemetery. Just how long do you think you can protect her?”

Klaus made a mad dash in the direction in which Rebekah had fled, but Elijah cut him off before he could get far. 

“As long as it takes,” he said, panting slightly. “And by any means necessary.”

They paced back and forth through the night and late into the following day. Elijah watched like a hawk as his brother became more and more bothered by the pesky imagery Elijah’s continued careful language had no doubt brought up. 

His thousand yard stare grew deeper even as he kept blinking hard to focus his eyes. Every once in a while he would shake his head as if to cast the memories from his mind.

Over the years, Elijah had noticed certain everyday sounds that put his brother on edge. In a given day, Elijah would take care to avoid making those sounds. This day, however, he took great care to make them all. Scuffing his shoe on the ground a certain way, clearing his throat the same. Anything to rattle his brother further.

And it worked, he noted as Klaus’s breath grew just a tad more labored, as he reached his free hand up to rub hard at his temple.

_Just a little bit more_ , and his brother might be distracted enough for Elijah to swoop in and snatch that stake. Then, maybe, they could really talk.

“I see what you’re doing,” Klaus hissed, heel of his hand pressed into an eye. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?

Elijah shrugged, adjusting his grip on the Tunde blade.

“I could get past you,” his brother murmured, face momentarily clear of obvious turmoil as his met Elijah’s gaze. “But it might have to be over your dead body. After all, you did stab me with that blade. Perhaps my ire should be directed at _you_.”

Elijah wondered how they had ended up here. Truly, he cursed himself for allowing his brother to be put on this path a thousand years ago. But how, _how_ , did they end up _here?_

Elijah shook his head in disgust. “You should see yourself. Murderous expression. Self-righteous posturing.” He held out his arms, mocking his brother. Deep in his heart, he hated himself, but he saw his chance to end all this so, for Rebekah’s sake, he took it. _“You look like father.”_

He watched his brother’s face crumble as he stood there, speechless for a moment, eyes filling with tears. “How could you...” he whispered as Elijah watched his grip on the stake slacken. Just a hair more. “I’m not him! Rebekah’s actions justify my anger. His was that of a madman!”

Truly, Elijah had been so close to being able to end this the easy way. So, so close. He hadn’t seen it then, but it was at that moment when his plan began to unravel. It had been a gamble, after all.

Because indeed, Niklaus’s post-traumatic stress had the capability to incapacitate him, to freeze him, but it also had the power to fuel his rage and make him truly deadly. Even to Elijah.

“ _You_ were never the recipient of his cruelty! None of you were, not Kol, not Finn, none of you!”

_Stand firm_ , Elijah told himself, boxing away the pain he felt upon seeing the anguish lining his brother’s face and the memories of the many times he had seen it before. He kept his own face smug and uncaring, even as part of his heart rotted away.

“I think you’ve forgotten what he was truly like.”

That couldn’t have been farther from the truth, Elijah mused as he was briefly caught in his own memory. That of cowing to his father’s fury. Standing by, doing nothing to help his brother. Elijah was more than aware of his brother’s nightmares, but Elijah had plenty of his own. Many a night, his dreams were haunted by his brother’s screams. _So many times_ , he had heard that scream.

God.

Niklaus bolted, and so did Elijah. His brother looked on him with annoyance as he was caught once again, exhaustion beginning to show clearly on his face.

“Niklaus, I understand your anger, and I do not disagree that it is justified, but I implore you to be better than him. Do what he could not. Demonstrate the grace or mercy rather than petty cruelty.”

“You ask me to show mercy to one who had wronged me?”

It was right then that Elijah realized his gamble had failed. Was in the process of failing. Instead of failing victim to his grief, or even blinding rage (key word: blinding), he was shutting it all out. And that was dangerous.

“You really don’t know me at all, do you, brother?”

“Enough.”

And it was gone. All of it. Klaus’s face went completely expressionless, his eyes utterly dead. Elijah had failed. He had failed them all.

“Whatever I have done wrong,” Rebekah continued, “My guilt is nothing compared to yours. You want revenge? Fine. But before you have it, I will look you in the eye and tell you why it was _your_ cruelty and _your_ spite that led us to this.”

“Go on then,” Klaus drawled, gesturing grandly, eyes still devoid of any emotion. “Speak your piece. And when you are finished I will grant you the punishment you deserve. Even if I ave to go through Elijah to do so.”

The trial, complete with Klaus sitting up on a mausoleum like a judge on his pedestal, was a bit ridiculous. Elijah sat down on a grave, mentally exhausted, and bid Rebekah ignore his posturing and say what she had to say.

“You summoned our father! You brought him to our home, what defense could you possibly have?” Klaus shouted at her, pained.

“I knew that he was the only thing that you feared and I wanted you to run,” Rebekah replied, voice slow asshe was caught up in the memory.

“Because you hated me!”

“Because you were hateful! You denied me the freedom to love!”

Oh, God. Elijah rested his head in his hand. Indeed, Niklaus’s controlling behavior towards his siblings had been inexcusable, but Rebekah could not have chosen poorer words.

Klaus stared at her for a long moment, uncomprehendingly. “So you mean to tell me that you called our father, who regularly beat me bloody, who hunted us for centuries, who would gladly slaughter us all like cattle, who _murdered_ my _newborn_ , because I wouldn’t let you be with your boyfriend? A relationship that in the end I applauded? Are you…quite serious?”

Rebekah’s voice shook as she answered. “You were cruel! And controlling and manipulative.”

Klaus had no real defense for the way he had treated Rebekah. His claims that he was trying to protect her made no sense to anyone of sound mind. But, as Elijah gazed upon his brother, who he in turn had tried so hard to protect, Niklaus was not of sound mind, was he?

“What has happened to you?” Rebekah asked sadly. “I remember the sweet boy who made me laugh, who gave me gifts. Who loved art and music. I wanted to be just like you. How could you have fallen so far?”

“Our father beat it out of me.”

_And it’s all my fault_ , Elijah’s mind supplied unhelpfully. “You say you despise Rebekah, but no one has stood by your side for so long, not even I myself. Perhaps it’s you that’s forgotten the day when father beat you so mercilessly and for so long, that I actually feared for your life. In the end it was Rebekah that saved you. The night your daughter was born, it was I who abandoned you, and Rebekah who stood by your side until I pulled her out, thinking I was saving you both. And we all know what my error in judgment cost us.”

For a brief moment, it seemed that Klaus might see reason. Wishful thinking. After a brief exchange about Marcel, and love, and manipulation for power, Rebekah signed her own death warrant.

“I called Mikael! I called him to the city because of your wickedness! I wanted love and happiness and you denied me the freedom to have either! Yes, I hated and I was afraid of our father, but he was a lesser evil than _you_. I wanted rid of you. And given the choice I’d do it again.”

In a fit of anger, Klaus launched himself at her and Elijah saw he chance. He knocked his brother down and snatched the white oak.

“Sister, leave us.”

“I won’t go—"

“I said leave us, please.” To Klaus, he said, “You wouldn’t listen to her, so now you must deal with me.”

Rebekah grudgingly obeyed as Klaus mocked him. What’s it gonna be? Torture or murder?

“Well unlike you, brother, I have not taste for fratricide. I only hold this to keep it from you.” Indeed, if Elijah had his way, he would never set eyes on this blasted thing again (he could remember all too well the feeling of white oak nearly puncturing his sternum). He held out the Tunde blade. “This is just insurance.”

“Why must you defend her?” Klaus approached him. “Rebekah betrayed you as well when she brought Mikael here!”

“Because Rebekah is our sister and I like to remember how she was before we became…what we became.”

“My memories only serve to make her betrayal even more painful.”

Elijah…could relate. “Can you not accept some small part of the blame? After all, it was your cruelty that led her to do what she did.”

Klaus snorted. “Can you not see, Elijah? She didn’t mean to chase me off, she wanted me dead!”

Elijah shook his head, mustering as much patience as he could to deal with yet another bout of his brother’s vicious paranoia. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

“Yes! You have no idea what she was prepared to do for you!” Elijah was quite surprised that Niklaus was unaware of the night Rebekah had planned to murder their father. How she would have done it had Elijah not stopped her (oh, how he regretted it).

“Why are you telling me this now? After _everything_ , why now?”

Elijah tried yet again to make him see reason, make him see how despite Rebekah’s quick temper and penchant for acting without thinking, she loved him, but that his malicious treatment of her broke her heart and caused her to make a drastic and stupid decision.

“I’m not entirely sure I can blame her.”

Niklaus turned to face him, any headway Elijah had been making on the mercy and reason front gone in the blink of an eye. “I can.”

He bolted and Elijah was once more forced to follow him.

Niklaus glared at him and continued. “If truly I am to blame for all her suffering, then she should have taken that stake and plunged it between my ribs herself. It would have hurt less, and it would have been less of a betrayal than calling the man who has done us all so much harm. Over my dead body will I forgive that.”

Niklaus began to taunt him again. Was Elijah _really_ going to just stand against him? After all, he had the stake, why not use it? Niklaus was the embodiment of everything Elijah abhorred in himself, his brother said. Elijah refused to think on it.

“So go on.” He held out his arms. “Do it.”

Elijah was not stupid. He had been his brother’s keeper for a thousand years and knew well enough that Niklaus had been suicidal long before he was afflicted with the Hunter’s Curse and had been known to be so long after the curse was lifted. More than once, Elijah had stood in this exact place, his brother’s mood having been known to turn on a dime from blindingly vengeful to actively suicidal before Elijah could even think twice.

Niklaus was also not above threatening such a thing to manipulate his brother, something Elijah found truly despicable and had zero tolerance for. As such, it was very possible he was acting as he was to try and regain possession of the stake.

As he could not always tell the difference between the two moods, Elijah decided it was best to remove the point of contention from immediate play. He threw the blasted thing across the graveyard.

“I am not so cowardly as to have to kill you,” he said, patience wearing thin. “But if I have to make you suffer to protect Rebekah, I will.”

Niklaus grinned maniacally. “You see?” He turned away, but not before Elijah watched the false emotion drop off his face like a dead weight. “I knew you couldn’t do it. You still _cling_ to the hope that I can be redeemed. And if the _bastard_ can be saved—“ Elijah rolled his eyes at his brother’s choice of words. “Then maybe there’s hope for you.”

Then next thing Elijah knew, the Tunde blade was buried in his chest. His brother had gotten the jump on him by playing on his sympathies. Again.

God.

“There. Now you know how it feels.”

*******

The stake in her hand felt heavier than it ought to. Perhaps it was the weight of finality it offered them all.

She had heard what Elijah had been trying to do, and though she understood his thought process, she couldn’t believe he had been stupid enough to think it would actually work on Nik, enraged as he was.

She focused on the feel of the stake in her hand, doing her best to block out Nik’s taunting of her and Marcel.

She shook her head at him. “You take joy in other people’s pain and then wonder why they hate you!”

She really should have seen that he had be baiting her, because of course he had. That’s what he did, and really he was quite good at rattling her. 

Their arguing escalated. She didn’t understand his fixation on her summoning Mikael because she wanted him dead, but when did she ever understand his fixations? This whole affair and a century of carrying this secret had made her so very tired.

_Admit the truth, admit you wanted me dead._

She didn’t, she hadn’t. She just wanted him to run. All she had wanted and continued to want was freedom.

He baited her more. _Just admit it, help Elijah_ , and whatever her reaction he twisted it and turned it back around on her, pressuring her to say what he wanted. He really was just like Mikael.

In a way, he was worse.

“I didn’t!”

“ _You wanted me dead_!” he outright screamed at her before his voice dropped to a whisper. “Admit it.”

In the end…he was right. In those days, Rebekah had hated him so fiercely for his manipulation of all their siblings that truly she considered them all better off without him. And if that’s what he wanted to hear, who was she to deny him that.

Staring somewhere in the middle of his chest, she whispered, “Maybe I did…” She looked him in the face and was utterly stunned by what she saw.

She had been expecting smugness, vindication. _See? I know everything about you, sister, I’m going to kill you now_. Something like that. Instead she saw her brother completely and utterly destroyed in a sense she had only seen a handful of times before, none of which she cared to draw to mind.

What had he wanted? Truly, as her heart clenched in anguish, her soul roiled in fury. _What had he been expecting?_ Why did he have to ask questions he didn’t want the honest answer to? Just _why_.

Her breath came quick and fast as she began, “Nik—“ but before she could move a muscle, the stake was between her ribs.

…But it didn’t kill her. It was nowhere near her heart. She stayed there on the ground where she fell, pretending to be dead until night came, pondering her next course of action.

Did he know he hadn’t killed her? Had he meant to? If he didn’t, could she run? 

What even was this day.

Eventually she approached him, because no one could hide rom Niklaus Mikaelson forever, even if he thought they were dead. And she was so tired of running. There, sitting by Elijah’s body, he looked quite troubled, quite…resigned to something. She wasn’t sure what. 

“You missed my heart.”

“Perhaps I did. Or perhaps I never meant to kill you. Perhaps I just wanted you to feel a fraction of the fear I felt every time father came for me.”

She watched as he shifted back and forth, shoulders set like a cat waiting to pounce, head turned ever so slightly to the side as if waiting for someone to attack him from behind. He looked just as rattled as she felt.

And indeed, his understanding of the events portrayed his unstable mind as well as ever. He was completely unaware of the damage his controlling and threatening behavior caused, because he never had _death_ in mind for them. As if that was supposed to make it all better somehow.

“You made our lives a living hell!” she tried to make him see. “You tormented us!”

“I love my family!” He stared at her, eyes wide and tears on his cheeks, and Rebekah could remember many a time he had looked at her like that. She tried to remember what he used to be like, before insatiable fear clouded his eyes. She couldn’t remember.

“I loved all of you!” he went on weakly, before sighing and getting o his feet, coming to stand in front of her. “I know I can be difficult…” She barely resisted slapping him. Difficult. “But I did not make myself this way.”

_Screams._

_Sobbing._

_The first time she had seen the thousand yard stare that had been in his eyes the whole day, his dead newborn in his arms._

“It was Mikael who ruined me.”

She knew that. They all did. And they all felt it. “He ruined me, too. That’s what you forget. Centuries later, every one of us is broken. We live without hope, and yet we will never die. We are the very definition of cursed.”

When she walked away, he didn’t stop her. Nor did she feel the sting of the blade in her back.

She heard him approach again hours later.

“We’re still trapped in here,” she said without turning around. “Whatever you’re going to do to me, do it now.”

“You said our father ruined us…” She heard him walk a little closer. “And I can’t help but wonder if his father ruined him.”

In the end, he let her go. She had no idea what sort of sentimentality changed his mind. Perhaps it was the thought of his own daughters. The one who lay dead for a thousand years, and the one who had yet to be born. Perhaps that was compounded with the idea that if Mikael’s father had ruined him, and then Mikael ruined his own children, then Nik had better shape up and change the story if he expected not to do the same to his child.

Whatever it was, she didn’t know, but in the end he let her go, and in the end, she walked out. Free.

Maybe their brother was still in there. Somewhere.

*******

Klaus kept forgetting where he was. He kept forgetting what year it was, too, and that Mikael was dead by Klaus’s own hand. Every shadow, every leaf blowing the breeze had him jumping clean out of his skin, terrified that his father would suddenly step out and kill him.

Elijah, oh, Elijah was a smart one. Using his knowledge of Klaus’s problematic memories to rattle him and use that to manipulate him and try to catch him off guard.

Truly a man after his own heart. Klaus would have to remember that trick.

It had worked a little bit at first. Elijah had managed to disarm him. With a little work, Klaus would gladly add this trick to bag.

Perhaps, Klaus thought as he walked the dark streets alone back to his house, Elijah’s trick had worked a little better than he originally realized. Because he was rattled to the very core. So much so that he didn’t notice the group of twenty or so vampires in his courtyard until about ten of them moved.

Of course Marcel was behind it. Marcel, his adopted son. Marcel, the only honorable one amongst them. Who had come to face him fairly in front of his own people, to end the quarrel then and there for the good of all..

Mikael’s father and ruined him, Mikael had ruined Klaus, and truly Klaus had done everything in his power, knowingly or otherwise, to try and ruin Marcel. And Marcel had gotten through it and somehow come out the other side.

God, Klaus was so tired. Vampires weren’t supposed to get tired, and yet there he was. His nerves sparked at the feeling of being surrounded and challenged, but the bone deep weariness settling on him discouraged him from doing anything about it. His conversation with his sister all but prevented it.

Once upon a time, Marcel had been his son, hadn’t he? And look what he had planned to do to him.

Elijah had been right, hadn’t he?

He really was just like Mikael.

He turned and walked away.

*******

Elijah was sick of everything. That dagger in his chest head put him in a truly foul mood, and compounded with everything else that had occurred, he was really quite murderous.

Throwing Marcel against a wall felt wonderful, though. As did kicking out the rest of his lackeys.

“Nicely done, brother. You’re beginning to sound like me.”

Elijah hadn’t seen him up there. He almost hadn’t recognized his voice, it was so dull and tired. “I’m impressed.” And with that, Niklaus was gone.

They had quite a bit to discuss, Elijah knew. Quite a bit to work through. 

Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow.

 

**El Fin**


	5. Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't supposed to go like this. It wasn't supposed to happen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm literally the worst at the whole updating game and I appreciate each and every one of you for sticking with it. Hope you like it, lmk what you think! Comments do occasionally make me write faster. <333
> 
> Coda 1x22

To be honest, Klaus couldn’t remember what had just happened.

Sure, he _knew_ what had happened, he just couldn’t remember exactly _how_ he’d gotten there. And now, holding Hayley dead and his arms, his newborn daughter stolen off to God knows where, he couldn’t think of what the fuck to do next.

_It wasn’t supposed to go like this._

_This wasn’t supposed to happen again._

And the witches called _him_ a monster. It wasn’t _he_ who planned to murder a newborn child. It wasn’t he who slaughtered the mother like a fucking animal.

And pinned against the church wall, no matter how he had screamed and thrashed, he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

_Again._

They’d snapped his neck and dropped him as they left. The next thing he knew, he was holding Hayley in his lap with no way to tell how much time had passed.

He kept forgetting where he was, too focused on Hayley’s face.

Was he there? Or was he 1000 years ago, holding his dead daughter in his arms?

 _Get up you blasted fool!_ a part of him yelled in the back of his head. _Get up or you will be holding another dead daughter too!_

But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t fucking move. He could only sit there like a goddamn fool, the image of his baby daughter seared on the inside of his eyelids.

“HAYLEY!”

Klaus barely even noticed it when the doors burst open and Elijah came flying in, covered in blood and mad with worry.

Elijah dropped to his knees beside his brother and dead lover, reaching out a hand to brush gently over her cheek.

“She’s gone,” was all Klaus could manage. He couldn’t figure out if he was talking about Hayley or his baby. 

Elijah sat down heavily on the step, too stunned to even cry. Klaus couldn’t say the same as tears ran down his cheeks.

“You’ve been bitten,” Klaus murmured, a bit detached.

Elijah stared uncomprehendingly, more subdued than Klaus had ever seen him. Klaus bit into his wrist and offered the blood to him. Surprisingly, Elijah took it.

They laid Hayley out on the alter. Elijah stayed standing, fussing over how her hair was laying while Klaus slumped back down on the step, feeling as though time was oddly segmented.

“How?”

Klaus barely heard him. “I was bested.”

“You were _bested_?” Elijah hissed. “ _You_ were _bested?!_ My invincible brother?”

Klaus rose shakily to his feet, beating back a nasty memory with everything he had.

_His baby in his arms, cold and limp. Her grave in front of him, underneath the white oak._

_“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. “I was bested.”_

_And now it had happened again. What made him think the results would be any different?_

He shook himself hard, the nails of his left hand digging hard enough into his palm to draw blood because how could he have forgotten that she was not dead yet.

“There’s still time. We can save her.”

And Hell hath no fury like two brothers scorned.  

*******

Klaus hated witches with every fiber of his being. A maze. They had locked them in a fucking maze.

“If we could just push through…” Elijah said, a slight panic shaking his voice.

Klaus tapped his knuckles on the stone crypt. Good luck with that. (He was calm now, too calm, sickeningly calm and he knew what that meant and what would happen if he wasn’t careful—)

“We need to focus—“

“The only thing I am focused on right now is the safety of that child,” Elijah hissed. “This, all of this, is the world that you created, Niklaus.”

“Brother—“

“All of your scheming, all of the enemies that you have made every single day of your miserable life, what did you expect?” He sounded on the verge of tears. “That your child would be born into a happy world, that the mother would still be alive to know her daughter? That we could live as some sort of _family?_ ”

Really though, Klaus seethed, anger clearing his vision. What had family ever gotten him.

“That was _your_ fantasy, not mine!”

“ _No!_ This was our _hope!_ Our family’s hope. And now she’s gone.” And Klaus watched as his brother crumbled before his eyes. “I let her in…” Elijah panted, tears dripping down his face. “I let her in…I don’t let people in.” 

And Elijah blamed him for her death. He made that very clear. Which was fair. This…this was his fault.

“I needed her and you’ve broken me.”

Klaus hugged his brother. Surprisingly, Elijah didn’t break his neck for it.

Once there, though, Klaus had absolutely no idea what to do besides hold onto him as tightly as he could. Elijah was the one who did this whole comforting thing, not him. He wished he knew how to do it, but he didn’t.

 _What would you need?_ Cami had asked him one day while trying (and mostly failing) to teach him ‘empathy’.

He could remember a time when their positions were reversed. It was shortly after they’d become vampires and fled the wrath of their father. Klaus could hardly remember most of the time between the death of his child and…an undetermined amount of time later due to the abject misery he’d been drowning in. As such, Elijah had caught him trying to shove a knife through his breastbone, logically knowing that only white oak could kill him (of which there was none), but not really comprehending it. And willing to try anything to get around it.

Oh how Elijah had shouted at him. How dare you, what the fuck are you thinking, and above all _why._

_“Please let go of me, I can’t do it, I can’t do it…” he had sobbed as Elijah wrestled him to his chest, gripping Klaus’s wrists tightly as the dagger clattered to the ground._

_“How could you? After everything, how could you?!”_

_“I can’t do this forever! I don’t want to, I don’t want to…” How Elijah had even understood him through his hyperventilated sobbing, Klaus had no idea._

_Elijah had been crying too, Klaus was vaguely aware. “Why, Niklaus,_ why?”

_Klaus had been too upset to answer. Elijah held him all the tighter._

_“You’ve got me,” he whispered, forcing Klaus to calm down a bit so he could hear him. “I’m a poor substitute for what you’ve lost, I know, but_ you’ve got me _. Always and forever.”_

_He’d fallen asleep that night, emotionally exhausted, to the sound of his brother’s heartbeat._

_He believed the first crack in his relationship with his brother came when Elijah found him two weeks later, desiccated, a sick of swamp oak protruding from his chest. Self-inflicted. He doubted Elijah ever really forgave him for that, no matter what he said._

He wrenched himself out of the memory. A reason to go on, that’s what he needed then. And he had a hunch that’s what Elijah needed now.

“You can tell your niece how much you cared for her mother when we save her.”

Elijah’s hands dug into his back, but he nodded minutely against Klaus’s shoulder.

*******

They were stuck. Again. Fuck.

Elijah angrily kicked a broken pot. “We need to move faster!”

“Or smarter.”

And Klaus’s heart promptly stopped and melted with relief.

Hayley.

And then it broke into a million pieces. Hunger, she said. Klaus wanted to break something. She’d turned. Somehow, she’d been turned, and Klaus was a selfish man who wanted more people like him, but she’d never wanted that. She’d already sacrificed enough for them.

But she could feel their baby, so he swallowed the wave of complicated emotions clogging up his airway and followed her, fury in his blood.

*******

In the end it was Marcel. Marcel who saved them all, Klaus’s daughter included, because he had somehow made himself into a good, righteous person, and the man Klaus used to be before his life went to shit was more proud than he thought possible.

Marcel, sitting in the courtyard of the Mikaelson family home, surrounded by the bodies of the men Klaus was too late to save, cradling Klaus’s very much alive child.

His son and his daughter.

The choice to heal him was the easiest one he’d ever made.

But Marcel refused, offering him a fever stricken yet heartfelt apology for bringing his father to town a century ago. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” he whispered, dark brown eyes a bit misty, but maybe that was just Klaus’s exhausted vision. Or his own misty eyes. 

“No,” Klaus said softly, crouching down, a hand on Marcel’s shoulder. “You _saved_ my daughter, and for that you deserve this.”

Tears running down his face, Marcel relented, and if Klaus wrapped his free arm around Marcel’s shoulders, then no one had to know. If he rested his cheek on the top of Marcel’s head, thumb stroking back and forth over his shoulder, and whispered the words “my son” in Old Norse (the words felt almost foreign on his tongue, he hadn’t spoken the language in so long), then no one was there to hear it, let alone understand it.

His gaze settled on the destruction around them, and rage flared in his chest again.

“We will take down whoever brought this upon us,” he hissed and Marcel let go of his wrist, drawing in a huge gulp of air. “I swear it.”

Marcel nodded minutely and Klaus’s newborn daughter cooed softly in his arms, and Klaus was lost to the world.

Awful, miserable memories prickled on the edges of his consciousness, but they were all drowned out by his beautiful daughter’s face.

Alive and well.

“May I?”

And then his baby was in his arms, fussing softly at the change in position and Klaus could have sobbed with joy and relief.

“Shhh,” he murmured, a smile nearly splitting his face in two. 

_Your life will be nothing like mine. On my dead daughter’s soul, I swear it._

Marcel was smiling at him and for just a moment, it was as if the carnage around them had disappeared.

*******

_Klaus didn’t know it, and he wouldn’t have believed it if he knew, but some small, withered part of Mikael regretted what he had done to Klaus’s firstborn child. That was the part of him that refused to let the vampire slayer forget the boy’s shriek of soul-deep agony, the devastation on his face, and the thousand yard stare and trembling of his hands that never really went away._

_And each time he saw his stepson, he was reminded of that terrible sound of a spine breaking and the horror that shook him to the core as soon as he’d done it._

_Naturally, if he eliminated the bastard, he would never have to see him again and would thus never have to remember those things again. Such was his logic._

_But it was that same withered, dying part of his soul that stayed his hand as he looked upon Niklaus and Marcel standing in the courtyard, all of their attention fixed on Klaus’s newborn child._

_And Mikael was the devil himself. The monster that monsters were afraid of. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it, not again._

_*******_

Cami ran through the house, horror prickling in her blood.

“The baby?” she whispered as she set her eyes on Klaus’s back.

“She died.”

And Cami’s heart shattered into a million pieces, the image of Klaus holding his dead firstborn still seared into the back of her eyelids now combined with the tight line of his shoulders and the crack in his voice.

“This is…” she panted, close to hyperventilating. “This is all my fault!”

“I can assure you, it is not.”

“If I hadn’t hesitated, I could have stopped Francesca—“

“And the coven of witches? No, if anyone is to blame, I am.”

And the broken pieces of Cami’s heart shattered further. “I am so, so sorry,” was all she could think to say.

He nodded minutely and turned. “Camille—“

Before she knew it, she was hugging him. The knowledge of the loss he had suffered before, and now the same thing had happened again…

She couldn’t bear it. She didn’t know how he could.

So she hugged him as tightly as she could, murmuring again how sorry she was as a few stray tears dripped down her cheeks. His arms came up around her almost immediately, one hand gently rubbing her back. Comforting _her_.

“I appreciate you being here.” His voice was calm. Horribly calm. _Shock_ , she worried, wondering how the hell to treat an immortal hybrid for shock. Anything she could do, she— “But we can’t be friends.”

“What?!”

“You had me pegged from the start. A man damaged by his demons, but those demons are not dormant. They are hellbent on killing me and everything I find beautiful!” For once, such a statement wasn’t caused by paranoia. She wondered how many of the others really had been, after all. “And you, you are beautiful.” Oh, her heart. “Please…please just go.”

“Klaus—“

“Go.”

So she did, because she heard what he meant to say. ‘Beautiful’ meant love, didn’t it? So, ‘You are beautiful’ meant ‘I love you’, didn’t it.

God in heaven knew she loved him too.

*******

Who would have thought, Klaus mused as he drove, his baby safely buckled into her carseat in the back. Who would have thought he’d ever be seeing Rebekah again.

He wouldn’t trust anyone else with something so precious to him.

His precious Hope.


	6. The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus had a type and not a lot of patience. Sue him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone still following and reading this despite my infrequent updates! I appreciate you <333

Klaus had a type. No, he _really_ had a type. And that type was, to put it simply, blonde.

Sue him.

And he had had a _day_ , same as he had every day for a good long while. Lay low, Elijah told him. And Klaus had listened. At first, he had listened.

But no one could keep him cooped up forever, so he snuck out with the intent to blow off steam in the most destructive way possible: get drunk and get fucked.

Elijah said sell the grief. What said grief quite like destructive? And what said destructive quite like anonymous, inebriated, unprotected sex? (Like he needed protection. He was fucking dead and had been so for a thousand years).

At least if someone recognized him during the process of getting plastered and then screwed senseless, it would be believable. And he would do anything, _anything_ to take his mind off his lost second child (and by proxy his first), even for a minute.

So he snuck out to an anonymous and crowded dive bar across the river and compelled the bartender to keep his glass full. Good whiskey, cheap whiskey, that shit that tasted like gasoline, whatever she had.

He thinks he went through about four bottles of the stuff, because by the time he laid eyes on the man, he was _drunk_. And the man was exactly his type. A little bit taller than him, well muscled, decent looking. _Blonde_.

Sue him.

It had been about midnight when they’d started dancing and Klaus, normally not one to give up any semblance of control or dominance, let the man put his hands on his hips, his abdomen, let him pull them to touch, the man’s front to Klaus’s back. Drunk as he was, Klaus did not want to draw this out. He had a goal in mind (and also a limited amount of time before Elijah inevitably noticed his absence and came to ruin his catharsis), so he took the opportunity to grind his ass back against the man’s increasingly obvious erection.

He leaned his head back on the man’s shoulder and brought up a hand to run suggestively over his jaw before crashing their mouths together.

Hand fisted tightly in the blonde’s hair, Klaus let him touch wherever he wanted (Elijah would think it quite scandalous, the way the man had a hand down the front of Klaus’s jeans right there in the middle of the dance floor in a crowd of people).

The release of it was _divine_. It really had been too long and the past year(s) really had been too much.

Which is how he ended up out in the filthy alley behind the bar, back against the brick, one leg around the man’s waist as they ground against each other and the man attempted to suck hickies into Klaus’s throat.

He only just remembered to pull back and compel the guy.

“You’re not gonna remember any of this,” he slurred. “Now fuck my brains out.”

Far too drunk on both alcohol and lust, he didn’t process the man’s confused look and subsequent eye roll before he was being turned around and his pants were shoved to his ankles.

 _Oh yes_ , he breathed as the man shoved in with little more than a quick two fingers and some spit.

Nothing like a good bit of (very) rough sex to blow off steam, he mused as the man seemingly did as he was told, indeed fucking his brains out as Klaus leaned against the brick. And if he let himself be louder than he normally would, then he blamed the alcohol and the fact that he’d compelled the man to forget everything anyway, so what did it matter if he was moaning like a two-bit whore? He didn’t know why, but it always seemed to make everything feel better.

He came with a shout far too quickly for his liking, his release splattering the filthy brick and the man’s teeth on his neck.

He had absolutely no idea how he made it home that night, and even less of an idea how he did it at four in the morning without waking Elijah or Hayley. He slept clean through to the next day.

And now, things seemed to have gone a bit pear shaped, hadn’t they, he mused a few months later as he was up at five the third morning in a row vomiting up the contents of his stomach.

He had ignored the first day, it having been right after a full moon. The second day was weird, but again, ignored. The third...had him thinking back on the last man he slept with. The fourth had him wracking his brain for something his must have missed.

And he was, by the sixth morning, increasingly concerned about that eye roll he had ignored.

He washed his face in the sink and shook himself. 

 _It’s nothing_ , he tried to reassure himself. _Just...stress. Of not having Hope here. That’s all_.

So he did what he always did when he was stressed (aside from engage in what for anyone else would be risky sex), which was paint. A lot.

That day, he was working on an Impressionist-inspired image of the street outside the window. He always found Impressionism to be the perfect distraction. You cannot be preoccupied with your thoughts when you are trying to capture a moment in time, now can you?

But that day, he found himself very distracted, moment in time be damned. The man must have been on vervain. Yes, that was why he hadn’t been compelled, because he had resisted the compulsion, hadn’t he? That was what the eye roll was that he had stupidly ignored.

And Klaus had slept with plenty of human men in his day since becoming a vampire. And nothing.

…The man had been _human_ , right? 

Klaus brushed off the thought. Of course the man was human. He would have smelled anything else. And because the man had been human, Klaus was _not_ pregnant. No way. 

He unwillingly thought back on his own situation with Hayley. A werewolf and a hybrid. So no, he could not get a human pregnant or get pregnant by a human, but…

“Impossible.”

The man being a wolf would explain the resistance to compulsion. But he would have smelled a wolf. Certainly, he would have.

_That drunk AND in that filth?_

_No, shut up, he was NOT pregnant, he was NOT!_

His head hurt.

He had been part way through the background on his painting when he caught himself rubbing at his chest with his free hand. It was getting quite sore, wasn’t it?

He threw the brush in the water cup and went to go take a nap.

*******

This canvas was making him want to scream.

A month. _A month_ of every morning, 5am sharp, all powerful hybrid heaving up his guts. Spending his days with the curtains drawn because of his damn head. And he was starting to hate painting on large canvasses because all the movement aggravated his sore chest. Hated wearing his rougher shirts because of how the fabric rubbed against hisnipples, which were now _always_ bothering him—

He really was pregnant, wasn’t he?

When the canvas ripped, he really did scream and threw it clear across the room.

No, he couldn’t be pregnant. Not now, _not now_ of all the times in these past 1000 years, hell, in the past _two_ since he’d broken the curse, why did he have to get pregnant now? With his living child in mortal danger from the covens and the wolves, his bloody _father_ having been resurrected…

_Fuck._

“I suppose we shall have to call this your white period.”

Ah. Just the person who could read him like a book (and therefore the last person he wanted to see).

“I’m missing a crucial color in my palette. That of my enemy’s blood,” he growled, hoping his foul mood would chase his brother off.

“I recommend a Venetian red with a dash of rust.”

Klaus was not in the mood for this. “It’s been months!” he shouted, all of his anger and frustration at the past and present welling to the surface. “I’ve adhered to our plan, sit and do nothing, sell our grief! And now my child is _safely_ away and _another_ full moon is upon us. Another night of pathetic weakness as the moonlight rings steal my strength.”

Which, if his suspicions were true, could be an issue. _God_ , he didn’t want to be pregnant, now of all times, he didn’t want to be. But if he already was…

_I can’t lose another child. I can’t do that again. If I miscarry because of these stupid rings, I…_

A mix of exhaustion and anxiety was evident in his voice. Indeed, Hope wasn’t the only child he was worried for now, was she?

Elijah eyed him, but remained silent.

Klaus supposed he had to tell his brother of his suspicions eventually. But not right then.

“The inertia is killing me,” is what he said instead. “I need to act, I…I…” he stuttered out the rest. “I need to spill blood.”

_I need to do something this time. I will be successful in doing something._

Elijah was unimpressed. He’d located the rest of the rings, he said and a wash of relief warmed Klaus’s chest. None too soon indeed. He allowed himself to be ever so slightly happy. That is until Elijah launched into a conversation about his concern for Hayley. And how Klaus looked no better than she did (go figure). And of course, with Elijah being who he was, he had to offer up his opinions on Klaus’s relationship with her. Which Klaus did not want or need.

“She has you to help her.” And indeed, Elijah was always the better choice to help anyone.

Elijah looked away. “Sadly… _like_ the father of her child, she prefers to fight her demons alone.”

Smart girl. They got along (—ish…big ish) for a reason, didn’t they?

Klaus went back to his paintings and tried to think of anything but the nausea brewing in the back of his throat.

*******

One thing was for sure, it felt nice to fight as part of a team again. As they tore up the intruders and snatched the last of the moonlight rings, Klaus couldn’t help but grin as he felt his newly restored strength surging through his bones, the sweet taste of revenge for the pain this particular brand of wolves had caused his family giving him a heady rush.

Truly, one better than any orgasm he’d ever had, and he reveled in it. 

He celebrated by adding that missing color into some of his recent works, fresh off a dead body. Nothing better.

But none of it really _fixed_ anything, did it? None of it brought Hope safely back into their lives. None of it cured their never-ending problems. None of it fixed his own personal situation.

He banished the thoughts and focused on the blood on his brush and the pleasurable rush of returning power flooding through his core.

*******

Klaus eyed the stones on the table with disgust.

“Why not just take a sledgehammer to them?”

“These were forged by a witch with your blood, brother,” Elijah responded with his normal degree of patience. “As such only the elements of fire and water can destroy them. I thought it would bring you greater pleasure.”

“As did I.”

Indeed, perhaps it would have, had he not spent the entire night and most of the morning sick as a damn dog and ruminating on every bad decision he’d ever made and everything he’d been unable to prevent. Namely his utter failure to protect his firstborn daughter, which he clearly learned _nothing_ from given his subsequent utter failure to ensure a safe world for Hayley and Hope, all of which combined to form a miserable track record that left him scared out of his mind for what might happen now that he was pregnant again.

_How can I do this when I have proven myself so utterly incapable?_

Panic welled up in his chest and he barely resisted the urge to cover his belly with his hands in some vague gesture of protection.

“This is my fault,” he whispered, shame and thinly veiled terror clouding his voice. “All of it. If I had just accepted Hayley’s pregnancy instead of…” He grimaced. “Playing king…” His voice cracked on the last word, _God,_ he was so stupid, _how could he have been so stupid_ , truly had his firstborn daughter’s death taught him nothing?

How could he have taken Hope for granted, _how_?!

“I should have listened to you,” he whispered finally, his hand involuntarily coming up to rest on his abdomen, a gesture Elijah undoubtedly noticed, but did not acknowledge. “Instead my greed, my envy has robbed me of my daughter. My actions have led to the release of a weapon that can kill not just me, but you.” 

“A thousand years I have survived your attempts to destroy me, brother,” Elijah replied softly, a hint of affection in his voice. He swept up the stones and continued on with their destruction. “I imagine I can survive this.”

Truly, Klaus did not deserve his brother. “You chase my redemption like a stone rolling up an endless mountain!”

Elijah regarded him with a neutral expression on his face. “Well no mountain is endless. Some are just steeper than others.”

Klaus watched the stones disintegrate as his brother poured water over them, once again saving him from his own stupidity.

“As much as I would like to be the one to comfort to comfort Hayley,” Elijah continued, “I believe only you can understand her grief.”

_That he could. All too well._

Klaus kept his eyes fixed on the stones.

“We lost our child…I mean what could I possibly say to ease her pain?!” he looked up at Elijah as tears ran down his face.

Elijah took a deep breath and laid a hand on Klaus’s shoulder. “What did you need to hear?”

Klaus hissed in a breath at the memory of holding his dead daughter in his arms, her grave open and waiting before him.

“That’s what I’m saying,” he whispered. “There was nothing you could’ve said to comfort me, nothing! Because what can you possibly say to someone who has lost their child?!”

Elijah sighed and ran his thumb soothingly over the tendons in Klaus’s neck. “Then say nothing if nothing need be said. Just be there for her. And if something need be said, then tell her what she needs to hear.”

Often, Klaus wished he was as wise as his brother. He nodded, eyes fixed somewhere in the middle of Elijah’s chest.  

“Something else is on your mind, brother.”

Klaus hummed noncommittally. 

Elijah tilted his brother’s head up with two fingers under his chin so Klaus would have to look at him. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing.”

“I can hear your heart rate and it is elevated to say the least.” Elijah gave him a moment to respond, and when he didn’t, he pressed on, resting his hand on the nape of Klaus’s neck. “If you really didn’t want to tell me, you would have brushed me off and left already.”

Klaus huffed a laugh. He was right, wasn’t he?

Elijah regarded him patiently, thumb brushing back and forth over Klaus’s collarbone. “Out with it, whatever it is. You know you’ll feel better. I even promise not to yell.”

“I think I might be pregnant.”

He hadn't actually meant to say that. The words just kind of slipped out, but Elijah was right. He did feel quite relieved having finally said it. His brother stared at him, gaze completely neutral. Klaus wondered if he planned on actually keeping his word on the ‘no yelling’ part. Elijah removed his hand from Klaus’s shoulder and took a step back, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What makes you think that?”

“I feel exactly like I did last time. Sick every morning, my head feels like it’s being crushed...” He was unconsciously rubbing at his chest again. Shit.

Elijah rubbed his eyes.

“May I inquire as to who you suspect to be the other father? And also how you encountered this person seeing as we previously agreed you would not leave this compound until further notice?”

Klaus’s mouth twitched. “A very attractive blonde I encountered at a bar two or three months ago.” At Elijah’s vaguely judgmental look, he continued, words taking on a bit of a bite. “I needed a slight break from house arrest. And besides, what says grief like destructively getting drunk and fucking the first person you see?”

“Does this blonde have a name?”

“I’m sure, but I don’t know it.”

Elijah rolled his eyes. “You do love your one night stands, don’t you?”

Klaus was getting annoyed at his brother’s obvious judgement. “You should try it sometime, Elijah, great way to blow off steam.”

“Seeing as how a possible three children have been begotten by your one night stands, I think I’ll pass.”

“Begotten,” Klaus mocked his choice of words.

“Have you thought to test your assumption?”

“You know I did, but seeing as how I can’t leave this house—“ Elijah silenced him briefly with a sharp look, which Klaus returned before continuing. “I can hardly pick up a pregnancy test. There’s also the pesky problem that vampires don’t urinate, so it wouldn’t be of much use to me anyway.”

Elijah nodded. “A fair appraisal.” He continued buttoning up his sleeves. “I’ll take some of your blood to a clinic tomorrow and compel someone to test it. Until then, go and comfort Hayley. And maybe don’t mention this to her.”

“I’m not a complete idiot.”

“I’ll agree to disagree with you there, brother.”

Klaus was beginning to regret confiding in Elijah.

*******

“It will get better.” The words were bitter on his tongue. While not wholly a lie, it was hardly the truth.

“When?” Hayley sat curled up on the couch, head resting on her palm as she stared at nothing. “I’m immortal now. If I can’t get through today, how am I supposed to get through forever?”

Klaus could remember thinking something similar as he watched the white oak tree burn a thousand years ago, his infant daughter buried beneath it.

“You know over the years,” he said after a while, “I’ve had my share of friends, enemies, lovers…horses, and triumphs. With time they all begin to blur together.“

Hayley bridled in annoyance at the platitudes. “And your daughter? Does she blur together with something else?”

Klaus flinched hard and looked away, hands clasped tightly in front of him.

Hayley sighed. “That came out harsher than I meant it to…”

“It’s okay.” It wasn’t, but he’d caused her enough pain that he owed it to her to just swallow it.

Hayley spoke again after a long moment. “Do you still think about her?”

“Of course I do…Every day.”

Hayley sniffed and wiped a tear off her face. “God, I shouldn’t even be upset. At least my baby is still alive, safe with her aunt…”

Klaus pondered that for a good couple of minutes before responding. “I’d actually say this is harder.”

That got Hayley’s attention.

“Sure it was…horrible when it happened, but then…even though I had to live with the aftermath, it was still just…over. It was nothing like this. Nothing like actively living a lie everyday, wondering if today will be the day the charade fails and someone finds her. The paranoia, the anxiety…” he trailed off. “No, you…have every reason, every right, to be upset.”

Hayley didn’t respond, only stared at the couch cushion in front of her.

“As for making it through forever…you will find the real moments are vibrant, and the rest just fades away…”

“Does the pain?” Hayley: asking the real questions. It was truly a waste of time to try and placate her with meaningless words, wasn’t it?

Klaus couldn’t find it within himself to lie to her face. “It…gets easier to bear. The more time you put between yourself and a moment…it’s still there. It’s always there. But it stops consuming every aspect of your life.”

Hayley snorted. “Maybe I’ll believe that when I hold my baby in my arms again.”

“And that you shall!” He took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. Just a little. “It’s going to be okay, Hayley,” he whispered, eyes fixed somewhere in middle distance.

“I wish I believed you, Klaus.”

Klaus wished he believed it, too.

*******

The smell of food nearly made him sick. He stopped on his way out into the courtyard and pressed his nose to his sleeve, letting the clean smell of the leather settle his near-constantly roiling stomach.

“Which high-end restaurant is missing a compelled chef?” Hayley asked as she heard him enter, focused on the food. She turned to look at him as she popped a grape into her mouth.

Klaus walked the rest of the way out into the courtyard, taking in the expansive display on the table. “Well that’s certainly a card I’ve played in the past, but this…” he gestured vaguely with his hands. “Was not my doing.”

Hayley shrugged. “Then I guess we have Elijah to thank.”

“This was not my doing.”

Klaus watched as his brother descended the stairs with a pensive expression.

Hayley frowned. “Then who…”

Something rattled ominously on the table. It turned out to be three starlings and an invitation to dinner under a platter, which could only be from their mother.

It would be reasonable to say that dread settled in all of their stomachs then. 

Elijah took a deep breath.

“Niklaus, may I speak with you alone?”

“Hey, I’m part of this family, too,” Hayley objected, face darkening. “Whatever you’re going to say to him, you can say in front of me.”

Elijah’s eyes locked on Klaus’s. “Not this.”

Hayley snorted. “And why not?”

Elijah maintained the direction of his stare. Klaus didn’t appreciate it. “This is an extremely personal matter dating back centuries. It would take longer to explain than for me to simply discuss it with my brother alone.” He turned to leave. “Now, Niklaus.”

Klaus grudgingly followed him.

In the relative privacy of a hallway, Elijah pulled a small glass vial from his pocket.

“Blood, please.”

Klaus glared at him. “There’s no way I’m not pregnant.”

“I’d still like to confirm it.”

“Then confirm and deal with it when I start showing. Until then I’m the same as I always have been! Why risk someone finding out for a simple test to prove what we already know?”

Elijah stopped him from walking off with a hand on his chest. “Niklaus, if our mother is involved I need to know if you are pregnant so I also know how involved you can be.”

Klaus started to seethe, but Elijah cut him off before he could utter a word. “I failed you once already. I will not sit idly by while you lose another child. Not Hope, and not this one. Especially not to your own stupidity.” He cocked his head. “I also suspect you might just be, ah, bat-shit crazy.”

Klaus glowered at him.

Elijah held out the vial once more. “ _Blood.”_

Klaus bit into his palm with significantly more force than necessary and overfilled the vial before shoving it at Elijah and storming off, their mother’s letter burning a hole in his pocket.

*******

Elijah was going to kill his brother, he thought as he stood in the city’s only Planned Parenthood, having compelled a technician to test Klaus’s blood.

“Are you certain?” he asked the woman.

She nodded. “Yes, this person is definitely pregnant.”

“Without a doubt?”

“Yes.”

He thanked her, compelled her to forget, and left, taking the blood with him.

Yes, he was going to _murder_ his brother.

*******

Things he didn’t want to remember kept sneaking up on him. Like his first memory of the starlings and how they related to his mother. He crumpled up the note and stalked back in from where he had been standing on the balcony.

“It’s times like this where I’m really glad I never knew my mother,” Hayley said from where she was lying on her bed.

“We have enough enemies here,” Klaus replied, flighting to keep the panic from his voice. “And now the war for our home is to be fought against my own family?”

“Your wretched mother and her disciples tried to put a carving knife through our baby’s heart. I will happily add to the body count.”

Fair enough.

“You will do no such thing. Esther is a master in the art of possession. We know whose body she currently inhabits. We must decipher her intentions before she finds a new host.”

Throughout Elijah’s mini monologue, Klaus had been attempting to catch his brother’s eye. At the end of it, Elijah finally met his eyes and nodded slowly.

It was true. Klaus was pregnant. And honestly, he had no idea how to feel.

He should be happy he was pregnant. Or he should be furious at the dreadful timing. Instead, he just felt numb. And scared.

He pushed the feeling away. “Well, her last invitation was an assassination attempt on all her children. I think we can assume her intentions are decidedly foul.”

Elijah held his gaze. The meaning was clear enough.

_No one can know you’re pregnant. No one. Or it will be used against you in the most painful way possible._

“Well then we have… _this afternoon_ to prepare for the worst.”

The worst being someone finding out. Now, the game of hiding it from a town full of witches and vampires. Lovely.

With one last reproachful look at his brother, Elijah stalked out. Hayley rolled her eyes.

Klaus made to leave, but she stopped him before he could.

“Klaus.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Hmm?”

“I can hear it you know.”

Klaus’s blood ran cold. “Hear what.”

Hayley stood up. “That second heartbeat next to yours.” She quickly backtracked. “Well, I guess at this stage it’s not really a heartbeat cuz the fetus has no heart, but…you get what I mean.”

He had no idea what to say, he was frozen. He only unfroze (with an undignified jump) at the feeling of someone taking his hand.

“Should I be congratulating you or driving you to the nearest abortion clinic?” Hayley asked him gently. Were he less panicked, he might have appreciated her difference to his options, but in that moment it only made him seethe.

He ripped his hand out of hers. “You think I should get rid of it, then?”

“No, Klaus, I didn’t say that,” Hayley replied patiently. “I only wanted to know your thoughts on it before I reacted.”

God, she made it hard to be angry at her, didn’t she? 

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m…I’m not getting rid of it, I…I can’t…”

“Okay, then we figure it. We find a witch we can trust, we cloak it so no one else finds out, and go from there.”

He nodded slowly. “How long have you known?”

Hayley smiled. “I had a guess at all the throwing up at ass o’clock in the morning. And I’ve been able to hear it for a couple weeks now.”

He huffed a laugh. So much for keeping it from her. “You must be angry with me for not saying anything.”

Hayley shrugged. “I thought you either didn’t know or hadn’t made up your mind about it yet.”

“And what clued you in that I knew?”

“Elijah’s nod just now.” Oh. “That’s why you gave him blood this morning, right? So he could test it.”

He nodded.

She took his hand again. “It’s gonna be okay, Klaus.”

“I wished I believed you, Hayley.”

As he left, he could guess that she wished she believed it, too.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! More snippets (or...snapshots~) to be added. If you feel like it, let me know what you think or leave a kudos! It' what keeps me writing


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